


Roadshow

by MohnJadden



Category: THE iDOLM@STER
Genre: F/M, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MohnJadden/pseuds/MohnJadden
Summary: A New York story at the end/the beginning/the middle/all in between the coasts.  An idea that came out of a bunch of fanart and capstoned with a commission (http://lmodesto.tumblr.com/image/85227317869).  Literally posted on Hibiki's birthday.





	

**DAY 0**

We touched down in LA and I was already done. I’d been packing and stacking boxes for the delivery truck that the studio had hired, mostly because they didn’t have anyone other than me - and yes, I’m aware that audio engineers usually don’t have to do the manual labor - just before we left for the airport. Two hours’ drive - no thanks to late-afternoon traffic - and then a 12-hour flight from Narita.

I’m somewhere else and someplace else at the same time. Tired as hell, too. It’s not easy to sleep on a plane if you’re crammed in the back. One of my high school friends supposedly went into the Ground Self-Defense Force and is in paratrooper school. Let him fly off to support an American tour. Or just capture the airport. Whatever.

My laptop bag felt like it took on three additional kilograms somewhere at 30,000 feet as I slung it over my shoulder and shuffled slowly up the 777’s aisle. We’d left around 7 PM and it was just now 6ish, same day, different place. I knew I was hungry and I knew I wouldn’t find anything that would go down easily in the airport.

Okay. Hungry. Easy enough. Some very smart person put fast-food hamburger grease bomb restaurants out in the terminal and I know my American numbers. Order with number of fingers. I changed my money in Tokyo, hand over the biggest bill I have. Crap. What is she asking me? “Excuse please?” I inquired. “Not enough?” I think that’s what they meant. She shook her head. Got some bills back - OK, good, I have enough, and oh how wonderful it is to eat something.

I crunched the numbers in my head while I ate the thing she gave me, some limp awful burger and fries. First night’s show, doors open for setup at 9 AM, rigging will be in place. This burger is the same crap you can get in Tokyo if you’re a high school kid and just want to hang out with your friends. At least it’s cheaper here. The Japanese flyover staff will be around when the doors open so we can get the shipping container unloaded, the speakers into place, and get cables run by the ground crew by noon. Then we can start verifying and testing.

The soda’s too sweet and the fries are too salty, but it was almost twenty minutes before I realized I’d probably run short of mixer channels on the primary board after a mental run-through. I’d taken out the schematics to at least get the show down pat first before I realized I still had a bag to pick up.

They’d given us a map as we loaded up back in Tokyo. It was almost too easy to figure out the airport and get to baggage claim, and at least I knew our airline and flight number. Hey, you try getting from point A to point B in Ota-ku without someone literally drawing you a map.

Okay, here comes the hard part. Remember the books you read - if you want to call a taxi, stand by the street and hold out your arm -

I nearly lost two fingers to the large yellow American car - the biggest I’d seen that wasn’t some mob boss’ BMW - that screeched up to me, along with its brethren, for others doing the same arm movement as me. I leaned down to the driver-side window - no, wait, note to self, here it’s the passenger-side - and came face to face with a dark-skinned man whose mustache seemed to be two big slabs of hair on his lips, his stubble pervasive and a spicy, sweaty smell mixed with some kind of air freshener. Some words in English, very fast.

“I… I am to hotel.”

More English. An interrogative sound. He’s asking me a question. Crap. CRAP. “Once please, slow?” I responded, reaching for my carryon bag. My phrasebook was in there.

Angry sounding. Okay, forget the polite introduction. “Hiruton,” I said with determination. “Hiruton Hoteru.”

Silence from the taxi driver. I don’t care if they cost as much as a month’s rent back home - I missed Japanese taxis already.

He ended up with our tour briefing printout in his hands, which thankfully had English enough for him to figure something out. I hope he didn’t care about our equipment manifest - surely he’s not on 961 Productions’ payroll, right? - and the trunk opened up. Thankfully he only put my suitcases in and not me.

The hotel was one of the big American chains, and I’m told it was a bargain rate compared to Tokyo. At least I had a view of the sun piercing my eyes as it sank into the west, over the featureless and gridlike expanse of the Los Angeles smogsprawl. I sank into a hard-backed office chair. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t make a friend in that taxi driver, mostly because a quick browse of the tour manifest mentioned that we had to include gratuities on our expenses. Note to self - start giving gratuities.

The itinerary had been finalized in-flight by the Tokyo office and someone had already faxed the set list, audio cues, and all the other fun stuff to the hotel. Good, I needed more papers to add to the manifest. I’d already paged through it a bunch of times, wrinkling the paper and tearing a little at the corner, having jotted down notes. -20db attenuation to wireless at 30 yards for PA, I’d scribbled for no useful reason. Bass cabinets colocated on rig at 3-6-9-12 meters. A rigging 12 meters across was pretty darn small - no, wait, my fault. I jotted down “vertical” next to that, thinking that somehow we’d be performing in a coffeehouse instead of the Staples Center.

I didn’t even bother suppressing the big yawn that crept up on me. I rubbed my eyes, a raw heaviness feeling like it was going to push me into the bed. The hotel coffee beat the pants off of the crap at 765, though, but a shame there was only enough for two cups. The first went down fast, mostly because I’d let it sit as I spent two hours jotting down speaker placement and angles. The second didn’t do much - I’d arrived at the hotel around 7 PM and it was 9:45 before I finally allowed myself to fall onto the bed.

Tomorrow we’d start assembling the rigging just as dress rehearsals kicked off. I had no clue how they were going to make that happen.

\------  
**DAY 22**

She swung partially around the bare-metal pole of the subway car, one of the newer ones. The same black cocktail dress from last night looked like a million bucks on her - well, to be honest, so did she. It was pretty clear that someone liked the L line cars more than the E line. This one was air-conditioned. Maybe someone up there likes me. Down here, well, the “maybe” part of that seems to have been less uncertain the last day or two.

“Hey!” she chirped at me as I watched her playfully orbit the pole at arm’s length.

“Hm?”

“C’mon, wake up! You were nodding off!”

“Oh. Crap, was I?” I rubbed my eyes, not sure how the human eyelid could turn ten times denser when jet-lag wasn’t at play. Felt like I’d landed at LA all over again, crammed into an NYC subway train. At this point it was all fatigue, thankfully fueled by coffee more than once. My head seemed to rumble periodically with a low, waning ache, probably no thanks to my first and second shots of vodka ever.

The tunnels whizzed by, the subway car’s wheels’ KAKLUNK-kaklunk-KAKLUNK-kaklunk rhythm somehow lulling me. Lack of sleep wasn’t anything new on this tour, but everything I’d ever heard about New York told me this was not the place to let my eyes droop in public. My headache pounds were only half from fatigue. Swirling with questions.

“It’s too early to sleep. Besides, breakfast awaits!” She grinned, that familiar big grin. How can she be so awake at 6 AM without any kind of dark circles? I’m not ready to say that the age difference between us is big enough that I’m “old,” but the evidence pointed too much to that end of things.

“I’m surprised you can eat that stuff.”

“But omelets!” The train’s brakes squealed and the announcement called out that we were approaching 14th Street - Union Square and the legendary Balthazar. “Their baked goods, too! And poached eggs, quiche…” She made another orbit around the pole at arm’s length, fortunately not hitting anyone near her - it was just her and me, with one guy asleep at the far end. Her last orbit took her to face me. She crouched a little low and grabbed my hand, somehow interlacing her fingers with mine on the first try. One swift yank and I was on my feet, directly opposite her, pole between us. Okay, maybe not all yank. After all, I was the one who reached out for her hand when I saw it coming.

The belly pocket of her hoodie slung over the shouders of her million-dollar-lookin' dress made a nearly-imperceptible quiver. “Don’t worry, Hamuzo, we won’t forget you - they’ve got something vegetarian, I’m sure!”

\-----  
**DAY 1**

The rigging was still sitting unassembled when we showed up at 9 AM. A whole team of workers was wearing the T-shirts that said something in English about a union. Figures as much. At least I knew where all the engineering gear was located, and the crate was thoughtfully rolled over to the engineering podium in the middle of the lower orchestra area. I picked up my jaw - it had almost literally detached itself from my skull when I saw that we had no rigging, thus were already three hours behind schedule - and made my way to the engineering podium. What a great start to our first LA show.

Mixing console - check. Power supplies - check, constant, tests OK. Battery backup OK so far, no testing available. Harmonic filters all look solid, nothing on a test tone. My printout had suffered another tear on the first couple of pages as I’d bustled onto the 765 technical team shuttle bus at the hotel this morning, with a really helpful Japanese-to-English audio phrase list AWOL in the confusion. Terrific.

“Ichi, ni, san,” I counted off into the small PA mic on the console. My voice was tinny over the built-in house speakers, but workable in case I needed to shout at anyone or meekly acknowledge them. Some nice person had even labeled the XLR plugs - makes my life a little bit easier. Okay, that’s one system down - the console labeled 16 individual sound channels, each with programmable motorized-slider filter settings. Nifty - they at least let me use the good stuff. Time to get to work. “Ichi, ni, san, test, test…”

I don’t know how long I was plugged in when the girls came out. They were on the same flight, but I wasn’t too close to them on the plane. Or on the domestic shows, either - last one I did was the big 765 Friends! concert at Ajinomoto Stadium, probably the biggest one they could pull off. They were still promoting Ryugu Komachi back then, before Ritsuko and Azusa had gotten married (finally, some people grumbled - not the people I’d let my sister date if I had one).

They looked a lot happier than a bunch of idols should be until they were plunged into total darkness a few minutes later, strobed by sparks coming from a union worker’s coffee taking a nosedive into a speaker on its back.

 

\-----  
**DAY 19**

“Okay,” I said, folding up the map and using it as an impromptu pointer. “We are here!”

Here, as it were, was what every tour guide said was the single best cheesesteak - I had solicited the correct pronunciation from one of the riggers after we cleared out of the Philadelphia show - in the city. This only after two of his buddies had chimed in, each of which with their own opinions…

“I’m quite intrigued by this,” the older girl said, blinking her dark-violet eyes at the sandwiches being slung from a small pickup window. She rested one elbow in her left hand, her free hand clasping her chin in a maneuver too close to stroking an imaginary beard. “It’s almost the exact stereotype of American food: lots of it, greasy, and lots of meat. Yet somehow, I can’t look away.” Having not been around her so much, I was only just starting to realize that her contemplation over food was not so much a personality quirk as it was her entire lifestyle.

“You bet there’s a lot of meat, Taka-chin!” one of the twins perked up. “Hey, Hibikin, you’re gonna order the one with the hot peppers, right?”

“Hot peppers don’t have anything on an Okinawan!” She flexed one arm triumphantly as the bald biker-looking guy behind the counter poked his head out quizzically. “I’m not afraid of any sandwich, even if it’s American!”

“Even if it’s this size?” A tilt of her head, silver hair swishing gently, thoughtful violet eyes first looking the sandwiches up and down, then Hibiki. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Gourmet Powerhouse of Project Fairy,” Hibiki ribbed back at Takane. “But I’ve heard legends about cheesesteaks - and I don’t care that I’m probably gonna feel awful tomorrow, it’s a nankuranaisa moment!”

“I thought your life was a series of nankuranaisa moments,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What was that, mister engineer?” She turned towards me, eyes twin teal pools of suspicious gaze, an eyebrow skeptically raised. I met them with all the maturity I could muster, trying to channel every single time I’d seen Toshiro Mifune on screen. I don’t think it worked. She stormed up to me and stood on her tiptoes, even then just coming up to my height, half her mouth twisted in a grin as wry as her eyebrow was raised. “I’m serious about this cheesesteak! I bet I could eat more of it than you… or even Takane!”

“Hibikin, Hibikin!” one of the twins chirped as I tried to adopt a detached, devil-may-care smirk. “I think you’re scaring him!”

“No way, she’s not scaring him at all!” the other twin - even with different hairstyles, I can’t tell them apart - retorted. “Look, he’s about to burst out laughing!”

“She’s sure scaring me!” They giggled in that weird simultaneous giggle that only twins do. At least, only these twins.

“Sounds like someone doesn’t want their order translated properly,” I shot back. I think it was just past the Liberty Bell when I stopped trying to herd them and somehow got drawn into their pace. “You wanted the double hot peppers, extra ketchup, zero meat, right, Mami-chan?”

“Okay, okay, nii-chan, you wanna play hardball, huh?” She started strutting up to me, interspersing herself between Hibiki and me. “Fine! We’ll just have Hibikin translate for us!” She grabbed Hibiki’s wrist and started pulling. “She’s got enough English knowledge, right, Hibikin?”

“Well, let’s not get TOO far ahead of ourselves…” She crooked one arm up behind her head, rubbing the back of her neck. “I mean, I think I could try, but then what’s he gonna-”

“Nii-chan’s been hanging out with you ever since the halfway mark!” the one I think was Ami chirped in. “We almost thought you were starting a solo American career, we’d only seen you at breakfast and at practices before the shows!”

The other one with her two cents: “Yeah, c’mon! Quit making lovey-dovey eyes at each other and hang out with your fellow idols every now and then!” Less malice, more evil grin at me, a lot of angry brow-furrowing combined with intense cheek-warming from me.

I’m pretty sure she was blushing, too, at least. A quick look from her - a furtive glance, the trace of a grin as she turned a little away from me - yeah, same eyes she made at me backstage in Chicago. She shook off Ami’s hand and threw her arms around the twins. “C’mon, Ami-chan, Mami-chan, we’re here together! Might as well make the best of it - right, Takane?”

A nod. “I’m quite literally only here for the food,” she said, turning towards Hibiki “but it tastes better with the people you care about. It always does.” She looked at me with a coquettish, slight tilt of her head as she looked over her shoulder, again with the gazing violet eyes. “Isn’t that right, Engineer-san?”

Dammit. She’s got that upperclass ojou-sama smirk going on. She knows something that she’s not letting on. They’re sharing their hotel room this trip, aren’t they? Girl talk late at night. Go figure.

“Listen, I don’t know about you girls,” I brushed off, putting on my best all-business-audio-engineer airs, “but if we’re gonna eat, let’s eat, okay?”

\-----  
**DAY 1 - AFTERNOON**

“Sorry about all this,” I said to nobody in particular. I held up the speaker to finish draining out the coffee. It was a loud enough apology to be heard but hopefully not loud enough to engage anyone, the perfect Japanese humility in accepting fault. Given that I still had to start leveling and testing the equipment already in place, this was one hell of a start to the first show of the first-ever overseas tour.

“Oh, it’s no big deal!” I heard one of the girls shout back. “Okay, so anyway - remember, when you make the turn, it’s turning your heel in, lift your leg at the thigh, kick out a little, THEN you make the jump! Heel first, thigh, kick, jump!”

I couldn’t help but turn my head. There she was, demonstrating how to make one of the more complex moves flow a little better. “765 Productions’ Dance Master! Hibiki Ganaha! Nankuranaisa!” she’d introduced herself at the pre-planning meeting, almost an eternity ago back at the office. I’d let her name melt into the others a few seconds later. Hard enough trying to spec out ten different stadiums, arenas, auditoriums, etc. - let alone foreign ones with little more than a seating chart, not including power supply differences, acoustics, I could go on - and keep the talents’ names straight. I chose to focus on the equipment. Now, with a five-foot Meyer tweeter at waist-level, tilted precariously forward away from me, supported only from my arms, I was overhearing a dance lesson under the mid-pitch buzz of klieg lights, running off of power from a working circuit somewhere.

I’d spent a few minutes more draining the coffee, but it was at least nice to see the talent starting up. The girl in the lead was moving her hips in time, arms and legs in sync, then stopping to re-demonstrate certain moves, point out muscle groups, and even literally grab someone’s leg or arm to move it into the right position. Don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t that I was watching her and the grace of her movements. It’s just that between that and making sure I’m draining all the coffee, I really couldn’t care less about coffee, for once.

In the semidarkness of the emergency-lit stage, she was still trying to keep the practice going. A flash of dark, swishing foxtail hair reflected off the dark-yellow lighting, barely enough to see, its movement backlighting the rest of her body. Her hair bounced gently off her back one move, whipping gently against itself as she turned her head in another direction. She spun, and before I could turn my attention back to the union tech grumbling something at me too fast in English, our eyes met. Surprisingly blue, corners peaked upward by her broad, grinning smile - they wanted to sparkle, there as she danced.

\------  
**DAY 8**

“Oh God oh God I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she stammered, hands covering her mouth as if to block off evil spirits. “He’s missing, he’s missing, he’s really seriously missing!”

I looked up from the tangle of thick XLR cables. The Austin show had gone off well, thanks to the ancient audio infrastructure - all analog equipment, making a really great sound for the theater - and I was blissfully alone in the audio booth. Probably the entire theater - I guess that’s why she came running up to me.

“Who’s missing?”

“Hamuzo!”

“Something tells me this isn’t the first time this has happened…”

“Now’s not the time for that! He can find his way around Japan but we’re in America!”

“He’ll turn up, I’m su-”

She yanked a large flashlight from my podium - emergency use only, of course - and flicked it on, crawling down the aisle of seats on her hands and knees. In her pink-silver-sparkly stage outfit. “Hamuzoooou!” she cried out. “This isn’t funny anymore!”

“Can we leave out bait for him or something?”

“I did! Peanut butter and rice crackers all over the stage, and nothing - NOTHING! They’ve been out for two hours now!”

I dropped the cable. “Two hours? You’ve been looking for him for two hours? The show ended two hours and fifteen minutes ago!”

An audible sniffle. “Yeah, and he jumped off my shoulder fifteen minutes after the show!” The pace of her words sped up as she crawled down the aisle, shining the flashlight up and down.

I shook my head and dropped down to my hands and knees, crawling down the other side of the aisle. “You know, not to be a jerk in a bad situation,” I said like all jerks said in bad situations - the same way they ought to just shut up and look for a teary girl’s hamster - “but maybe you oughta not bring a hamster illegally into another country next time.”

There was a clatter from a short distance behind me. Sniffles. Deep, rapid sobs. Crap. Now I did it.

I looked up and over. She’d abandoned the search, sat down on the floor with her seat back against an aisle chair, head resting on her bent knees, her arms wrapped around her legs, face burrowed against fabric. I could tell that she was shaking, and very definitely sobbing to the point near hiccuping.

Crap. I REALLY had to say that, huh.

“I really don’t have anyone here, do I?” she asked nobody in particular, a sob or two interspersed. Her words tore at me, her despair so evident against the backdrop of the everyday Hibiki. She’d been the vivacious one whenever I was with her. She’s the one who made me crack a smile, and I was the one who silently seemed to want to make her do so more. Here I’d gone and reduced her to a literal crying wreck of a girl.

“I shouldn’t have brought him, I know that!” More sobs. “I shouldn’t have brought him. I shouldn’t have left Okinawa. I shouldn’t have come to America!” Her last six words she almost screamed as she tilted her head back, tears streaming down her cheeks, hands half-wrought into claws, begging the heavens themselves. “I shouldn’t have annoyed you. I just want to know that Hamuzou is okay!”

I’d made my way quietly next to her and got down on one knee, patting myself for a packet of tissues. She’d returned back to her near-fetal position, sniffling loudly and sobbing deeply, but too quietly. I’m pretty sure that given how I was when I was 16, I’d feel on or close to the same way - then again, I wasn’t exactly the one who tried to reach out to others like she had.

It made sense. She got along great with everyone. She even came to hang out with me, of all people. Why? It clearly wasn’t me that she was after. Of course it wouldn’t be. I’m part of the family here, I guess. The background. The crew. An audio engineer amounts to a distant uncle, maybe?

A minute or two passed. “Hibiki…”

No response. She’d just been sniffling.

“I have an idea. I don’t know much about hamsters, but maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way.”

“Wrong way?” She turned her head to me, with her makeup remarkably intact from the stage. Her face was streaked with tears, and she sniffled a big sniffle. Her eyes were teary-moist, the wrongest kind of sparkle present in them from the house lights.

“If I was a hamster in a strange place, and I wasn’t in somewhere familiar to me - like your dressing room - then I’d look for something I recalled. Something I knew a little better than the surroundings.”

I stood up and looked towards the stage. Yep - there it was, a chained-together Peavey stack, one of the first sets of speakers that was hauled down off the rigging, was sitting there, stage right audience left. I squinted, trying to see if I could spot it from here, but a quick jog and a hop up to the stage confirmed it.

“Still going after that old spilled coffee?” I asked the hamster that had dragged a peanut butter-laden piece of rice cracker into the cavity of the woofer. “Come on. She’s waiting for you.”

I’d left them to their joyously tearful reunion as I finished up with my cabling. She was there with him for almost a half-hour, sitting around with him running all over her, perching on her shoulder.

\-----

**DAY 9 - MORNING**

I was keeping an eye on the small forklift as it almost slammed my gear into the tour truck as the bus left, idols on board, as they started off east towards New Orleans. It was a long drive on the waiting staff bus, but at least the show was tomorrow, not tonight. I was taking one last glance at the manifest when I heard a girlish “Yo!” accompanied by a swift pat on my shoulder.

I turned. Teal blue eyes, long black hair in a foxtail, a halter top under a pair of baggy overalls. “Shouldn’t you have been on the bus?” I asked Hibiki.

“Well, I kinda wanted to thank you for last night.” She tucked her hands behind her back and leaned forward a little. “Hamuzo did too.”

The hamster skittered up from some pocket, up her back, onto a shoulder. She stood back up, bringing him just that much closer to come eye-to-eye with me. The critter stood on its hind legs and somehow approximated an actual bow.

“He’s really special to you, isn’t he?”

“Well…” she held up a hand for him to jump onto. “Yeah.”

“As much as I appreciate your gratitude, you missed your ride. Best we’ve got is the staff bus.”

“But you’d just be doing engineering stuff or sleeping, wouldn’t you?”

“Not so much engineering stuff - at this point, it’s old hat. I mean, that was our seventh of fifteen shows last night. At this point the only problem is the union labor - that and idols’ hamsters getting lost.”

She stuck out her tongue at me. “Here I am, trying to at least thank you and you’re slinging insults!”

“I never really was the friendly type.” I signed off on the manifest and handed the clipboard to the truck driver, turning a sidelong glance at Hibiki. “See you in New Orleans.”

“C’mon, I could hitch a ride with you on the staff bus, right?”

“Like I’ve got a choice.”

“I mean… if you really don’t want to, I can-”

“No, don’t do that! I’m just…” I took a deep breath, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand for a moment. “I’m not used to having people want to be around me. Never was. Hell, there’s a reason I’m solo in the booth at the shows.”

“What reason is that?” she asked, another head tilt. I started heading for the staff bus; some other tech staff and back-office types were already straggling towards it from the hotel.

“You’re good with singing and dancing. You’re good with animals. With people. With entertainment. Me… I’ve always been a gearhead. I don’t know how to make people happy. Much easier to work levers than work with others. I can judge output by the numbers, acoustics by ear, and levels well enough just by gut. I’m good at what I do. College wasn’t an option, tech school was a little more affordable. Guess I got good enough to not have to be charming - for me, easy enough to focus on the job.”

“That’s true, you aren’t exactly charming.”

“Wow, thanks for reminding me why I like audio stuff more than socializing!”

“But you’re wrong about one thing, Engineer-san. You're good enough with people to have made me happy, and you knew just how to do it.”

She pushed me onward towards the bus. Literally put her hand to the small of my back and _pushed_. I almost stumbled, but she had swiftly walked up right next to me and was half-jogging towards the bus. “C’mon!” she shouted with a wave, one strap of her overalls lazily falling from her shoulder over her arm. “It’s a long drive ahead, and I need to pick every Hamuzo-catching trick you can think of out of that gearhead brain you’ve got!”

\-------  
**DAY 1 - EVENING**

“Thank you Los Angeles! See you again soon!” Haruka got to give the sign-off for the start of the tour. The lights went down, the audience cheered - as if doing so for about 90 minutes straight wasn’t enough - all around me. Having had their encore, we had nothing left planned. I slowly faded in the background music with the announcer in the back doing the usual thing about picking up after yourselves. Yes, you have to tell American audiences to clean up their trash after them.

I made my way around the front of the booth and started striking the console gear down. We had a couple of hours to load everything into a truck, and I didn’t have my rolling cases up yet. Fortunately we don’t have to worry about the rigging and such tonight - the advantage of a union, they HAVE to do this, otherwise we’d have to go around spilling our own coffee into poorly-placed speakers.

I got out at around 11:30, the yawn I let out about as wide as the stage exit, much to the chagrin of the questionable-looking sweaty guys waiting outside the stage door, waiting to swarm the girls for autographs. It was too long of a day to have gotten anything of the remaining jet lag out of my system - to hell with LA, and to hell with leaving early in the morning tomorrow.

Disappointed that I wasn’t one of the talent, I walked past unhindered by the small, sweaty crowd. Someone came out right behind me, some guy in a baseball cap, hands jammed into his pockets. I held the door a crack and he passed me as I walked behind him.

He was kinda short and slim - couldn’t help but pace him as I walked past. We’d turned a corner before I glanced briefly over my shoulder.

There she was - Hibiki, right? Yeah, Hibiki. She’s the one who was literally showing the other idols how to refine their dancing in the dark.

She must have seen me turn. She looked up and grinned, a completely different person out of her track shorts or fancy stage costume. I nodded back, approximating a polite smile. “Good show tonight.”

“Heh… not so loud!” she whispered back, smiling. “They told us we should try to keep a low profile since the public’s allowed near the stage exit.”

“Oh. Sorry. You all looked pretty good up there.”

“Yeah? I was kinda worried; our practice was cut short thanks to that power outage earlier.”

“I was too, but different reasons. The upper midrange on the left eave sounded like shit thanks to the coffee.”

“Coffee? Upper midrange?” She tilted her head, turning inquisitively to me. Her hair started to fall out of the back of her hooded jacket - there was no way she could wear it normally with all those greasy otaku fans. Most of them probably flew in from Tokyo for this, let alone the normal Americans.

“Coffee. Spilled into a live speaker. Which caused the power outage.”

“Ohhh!” She pounded a fist into a palm. “Everything sounded fine to me, though!”

“I guess I did my job, then.”

“Good job!” She gave me a thumbs-up. That grin again. We’d made it far enough away that she started to shake her long hair out of the hoodie. Kept the ball cap on, though.

“Yeah, you too. Not going out with the rest of the girls?”

“Most of them already went back to the hotel. I had to get Hamuzo out of the dressing room; he was hogging the mirror.”

“Hamuzo?”

“Yeah, Hamuzo!” She took her hand out of the front hoodie pocket, a small hamster sniffing the air and standing on its hind legs, staring daggers at me from the palm of her lithe, upward palm. Not what I usually thought girls carried in their pockets…

“You brought a hamster from Japan?! How’d you get it past the X-rays?”

“He’s the resourceful type - tinfoil and a tissue packet!”

“Isn’t that technically smuggling?”

She went nose-to-nose with the rodent. “He’s no bother to anyone - until he started hiding under the wardrobe rack! It took me forever to find this little guy.” She touched her nose to his, smiling intently.

“There’s no way I’m going on tour without as many of the family as I can bring with me!”

\-------  
**DAY 14**

“You really do miss them, don’t you,” I asked, turning around to rest my arms on the bare steel bannister roping off the edge of the waterside viewpoint.

There were tourists everyone, and thankfully nobody seemed to notice or care about two Japanese people at the base of the St. Louis Arch. The wind blew hard off of the Mississippi as the sun was setting, the summer evening already muggy and humid.

She rubbed her eyes. “Well, I mean, of course I do, but really, I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay - you’re crying.”

“It’s just sweat!” She’s been nothing if not quick on the verbal draw. Or too honest to lie well.

“Right…” I wiped my brow, dry despite the humidity. “Sweat.”

She turned away from me, her peasant-style blouse waving in the breeze, its bell-like sleeves flaring, winglike in their feathery lightness as the wind blew undulating waves over them. “I don’t get to go home all that often, you know.”

“Back to Okinawa, you mean.”

She nodded, her ponytail doing most of the moving. I could have sworn I heard her sniffle a little, her voice wavering. “Yeah, back to Okinawa. I missed my family so much when I started getting established in Tokyo, and before I knew it, they’d started sending up the animals we had back at our house.”

“So the alligator’s an Okinawan native too?”

“Waniko’s a crocodile!” She let out a half-indignant chuckle despite her mood, moving one arm up to her face.

“Here.” I stepped forward, held out a tissue packet.

“Thanks.” She pulled one out, wiped one eye, blew her nose gently.

“You really make it look easy, though. I wouldn’t have known you felt so… I guess, alone?”

“What looks easy?”

“Well… singing and dancing, for one. I don’t think I could do it.”

“I don’t think I could do all the audio engineering, though.”

“I mean, I at least went to school and have experience… you’re away from home, going to school, AND working as an idol. Without the family you’re used to.”

“Tokyo sure isn’t Okinawa, but the animals help.”

“You’re not in Tokyo now, though. We’re in America. You’re on tour, filling these stadiums and stuff. I mean, look, I’ve always been the gearhead for things like this, but it’s still amazing how many Americans come to see you all perform. Japanese fans fly out, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Hamuzo made it intact, too. Which, I’ll be honest, still surprises me - he’s one resourceful little guy.”

She turned towards me, squinting a bit - the sun was at my back, so it was bright - and pulled out another tissue, dabbing at her eyes. “Thanks for helping me find him… again.” She playfully bopped him on the nose. “At least he was just going for some snacks - I almost had a heart attack when I couldn’t find him.”

Hamuzo scrobbled up her back, from wherever he was hiding, and let out a few squeaks. She scratched him under the chin.

“I wouldn’t know what I’d do without Hamuzo. I really don’t know how to thank you.”

“You can thank me by cheering up - c’mon, give me your camera, let me take a picture of you two so you can remember the trip.”

“‘You two?’ No way!”

“Oh, come on, don’t be shy-”

“Excuse me mister!” She switched to English and dashed off to a tall blonde man, obviously out with his wife and kids. “Could you take picture, please?”

She grabbed my arm, yanked me over, extended her camera to the man, and flashed same big grin she had on stage as she pulled me next to her.

\-----  
**DAY 3**

San Diego went a little more smoothly, but thanks to the truck leaving LA late, we had to hurl every single human asset available at getting things rigged up. Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful for the help, but it kind of limited my workflow especially since we were in a crunch.

We started equitably enough - she came up and recognized me from LA, asked if I needed a hand. The usual pleasantries - I got this, thank you, but no worries; no, I insist, etc. - and we got started.

“So, um… these are the RCA cables, right?”

She held up a fistful of HDMI cables, not yet routed to the recording setup.

“Mrrfff…” I shoved the two-meter mountable woofer off of its wheeled dolly where a hook was waiting to hoist and mount it. “No, these are.” I reached an arm into the Gordian cable knot and managed to snake a set of RCAs out. “They run to the mixer console - the one really wide gray console in the middle - under the port labeled XLR 8.”

“Accelerator port?”

“No, X-L-R 8. The big plugs for microphones. English letters, remember?”

“Ohhhhh… right, okay - I got this!” She started to untangle the cable, coiling it around her forearm like I’d shown her..

“Just be careful - it’s really dusty, I don’t wanna get your stage outfit dirty.” They’d come down straight from a dress rehearsal and she was in her first-act costume, little more than a tube top, half-length jacket, and tights. All pink, all glitter-covered, and all midriffy. Don’t ask me how I noticed - look, she’s got a really nice waist, okay? I shouldn’t have to be explaining myself. Hell, she’s the dance master, after all - stands to reason she’s got a nice body. Great, now I sound lecherous.

“No problem!” she looked up, hit me with the grin, and gave a thumbs-up. “You sure you don’t need a hand with that?”

I looked back at her as I was signaling the guy up in the catwalk working the pulley to lower away. “It’s not exactly lightweight work; I didn’t want to make you haul around speakers and get sweaty.”

“I got the next one!” she said, excited. “I may not look it, but I’m pretty strong, y’know!”

‘The next one’ was a chain-linked Peavey stack that had to go up in the far eave. It came out of the rolling crate on its own dolly, but she had to get down and put her shoulders into it to even move the huge thing, let alone do so without crashing it into a seat.

“Here, let me come around and help - this one’s not easy.”

“No, I goooooot thiiiiss….” she breathed, teeth clenched. Her hamster was on top of one wrist, pushing along with her.

“Okay, hang on - here, let me come around.” My pulling and steering wasn’t getting it out of the crunch we were in, might as well push. I went in next to her, reached all the way around her with one arm, my hands right above hers as I hovered over her. “Push on three - one, two…”

The Peavey stack shot out of the two seats that had wedged it into place with a crack of splintering plastic. It fortunately stayed on the dolly, bumping and rolling a few seats down to a gentle stop. I heard it do so over the stunned squeaking of Hamuzo, who was angrily shouting at me in hamsterese.

“You okay?!” I asked, trying to get my bearings.

“I think I’m fine - but you’re pinning me down!”

“Oh, crap. Sorry!” I’d landed one hand on the concrete floor of the aisle, one hand on her shoulder, very definitely exerting my weight on her. I’d pinned Hibiki down, chest to chest, her lips inches from my ear. Funny how someone breathing that close sounds. I yanked away immediately, pulling a 180 to sit upright and get my bearings. She sat up next to me, still a little stunned.

“Hey,” she exclaimed, turning towards the offending Peavey stack, eyes wide with surprise. “We got it out!”

Still not sure which of us started laughing first.

\-----  
**DAY 16**

“I never really liked these outfits all that much…” she lamented, giving herself one final look-over. It was a big audience - I’d expect nothing less from a city known for its music. Chicago crowds were boisterous, too.

“Why not?” I pushed the headphones closer over my left ear, hoping that maybe if I kept this up, she’d realize I was busy. She really was lousy at taking hints. “It looks really nice on you. Shows off your skin tone.”

A quick spin, flaring out the jet-black skirt of the Tartan Check Rose dress. Quick lift of the left leg, impossible-to-miss mock-gold-glitter garter just above the knee. I couldn’t help but glance. Hands on the hips, feet shoulder-width apart, pointing out with the right finger, head-tilt and grin. Her hair blended into the red-and-black tartan on the bodice.

“Nice try with the flattery. It’s easy to move around in - too easy! I mean, first off, there’s the obvious trying to keep your hem down on stage...”

“Huh?” The audience was screaming, more enthused than I thought the middle of America would be. They’d scheduled the performance at an anime convention. Kinda like the big doujinshi markets, but they don’t sell doujinshi. A loud bunch, Americans - loud enough that I was straining to hear the last few bars of Kiramekirari coming from the stage on my sealed left ear. The pickup mics were just on the verge of too hot, and the damn motor-driven filters weren’t -

She’d been talking rapid-fire, a bit of Okinawa dialect leaching into her words. “- but when I do the last spin, it looks weird - mostly because you can’t get your balance when the halter’s looser at the neck than the jacket-type costumes. Guess you don’t gotta deal with those, though, huh?” Another big grin as she tried the one last spin - a double-axel, starting on the heel of the right boot, finishing on the toe of the left-

“Shit! Look out!”

Clearly she didn’t like the outfit enough to jeopardize her balance. Recovering from the spin, she backed into the backstage audio booth and toppled backward. I was close enough to grab her upper arm and yank her back, quickly looping my other arm around her waist. Good thing, too - if she reflexively thrust her hand out to the only solid surface she’d push a live set of sliders controlling the leveler filtration to maximum. Bad news.

I pulled her upright. Argentine tango dancers, watch out - I think I just perfected the low dip recovery.

“You okay?”

Her arm was all muscle, for something so thin. It felt like she was trying to flex against my hand as I held onto her upper arm, so precarious was she unbalanced above my console. The small of her back was bare under the half-jacket's hem, tense muscle all but palpable.  She was standing precariously on one foot, her other leg bent at the knee, almost grasping onto my waist as she started trying to regain her balance. I still held on to her waist, too trim for her size.

“Yeah - thanks! That was close.” She lowered down onto both feet. I let go. Another grin as she turned, brushing her long hair back against her neck and regaining her equilibrium. “Sorry about that.”

It was too dark backstage to guess otherwise. I’m pretty sure she was blushing. Good - nice to know I wasn’t alone.

Her arms were bare from the upper arm all the way to the neck thanks to the dress and its matching long gloves. Despite feeling her muscles, knowing how much she worked to stay that way - how many snacks she always had to pass up earlier on the tour, how many American foodstuffs the cities and towns offered out of hospitality - afterwards, I could only recall the utter gentle softness of her skin between listening for filter cut-ins.

“It’s an aisle in San Diego all over again, huh?” she remarked a few awkward heartbeats after she got her balance back.

“Well, at least this time it didn’t involve too much potential equipment damage.”

“Equipment damage?! Hey! Speakers don’t sing and dance!”

“Unless you push ‘em wrong.”

“You were pushing it too!”

“And look how we ended up.” The audience’s cheer marked the end of Kiramekirari. “Aren’t you on next?”

“Admit it, you just wanted to push me down now that nobody else is around, didn’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure your cue’s any second now.”

“Or you just wanted an excuse to grab me?”

“What th- you were about to shove every filter into maximum and mute a bank of live microphones!”

“You wanted to dance with me, didn’t you?” Hibiki mock-pirouetted, curving her upper arm with a supple turn of her wrist, brushing her free hand between my shoulder blades, lifting her gartered leg a little at the knee - only this time she didn’t fall down. “I bet that was it! ‘I’m better with equipment than people most times,’” she mocked in a pseudo-Okinawan imitation of me. The fuzzy tickle running down my back just didn't want to go away.

No response from me. I put the headphones back on, shaking my head. “I’ve got a console to configure for the next song, and you’re on for it. Any more delay and I'm gonna make you sound like an enka singer.”

I didn’t see her move up to me, so focused was I on not watching her move, not wanting to let myself catch the tantalizing glittering gold of her garter. My eyes moved towards her just as she’d come right up next to me.

“If you _do_ want to dance with me,” she’d whispered into my ear, suddenly bereft of its protective headphone - soft, but her proximity drowning out the cheers of the audience and the song wrapping up on stage - “I think I’d like to see your moves.”

My spine felt like it’d had a velvet cloth tickle it with a slam, shaking with a pleasurably soft sensation as she whispered to me, centimeters from my ear, her voice a little lower than normal. “I, uh, think I gotta get ready on the track cue,” I managed to stammer out. My stomach lightened for a moment, like going over a sudden steep drop on a rollercoaster. Goosebumps. Pretty sure they were all over my arms.

“This isn’t over, not by a long shot!” She stuck her tongue out at me before she turned and dashed towards the edge of the curtain.

“Hey, Hibiki!” I shouted after her. She looked over her shoulder, tilting her head back mid-stride. I looked up from my console, not trying to busy myself anymore. “Break a leg, okay?”

She stopped and grabbed a rigging support beam, pulling herself into a tight half-orbit, culminating in a quick pirouette on her heel. One spin, two spins, transitioning to the ball of her other foot, three. The hem of the stage outfit’s skirt twisted one direction then another as the satiny fabric settled. She bent her leg up a little, a quick bend of the knee - the skirt’s swish couldn’t but show off her garter, and I think she knew it - “Hey, who do you think I am!” she said with her familiar big smile and a wink, a two-finger mock-salute directed at me.

“Nankuranaisa!”

\-----------  
**DAY 21**

My jaw dropped. My cheeks reddened - or at least they felt like they did. “I, uh…” I started out. Stepping out of the side cabin door onto the bow of the small ship, out of the din of the front galley, she was waiting as she said she’d be.

“Told you I’d get the glasses if you brought the champagne!”

The same grin, a little subdued for the evening. She’d taken off the high heels she’d worn, same way she was always first to get back into sneakers for practicing. Dangling from her hand, the strappy black shoes clacked a little against the metal railing of the ship. In the other hand, two champagne flutes.

“Well, I did bring it. It’s still a risky idea, though.”

She didn’t need to know that “sparkling cider” in English is very definitely not the same as champagne. Part of me wouldn’t have minded things to be different - the same ship, a different drink, a few less years between us and a year or two more spent together. At least, for her. Okay, I know that 16 is not bad since I’m 20 - but yet here I was, with her, on this chartered yacht in New York Harbor, out of the big end-of-tour party and with Hibiki.

I undid the wire tie holding the cap on, and worked the cork free. I’d seen this done a bunch of times but wasn’t quite prepared for the force at which the cork flew out of the bottle and into the water. The hollow, loud pop stunned both of us for the moment.

The champagne glasses tinked once, then twice in her hands - once from the stun, and once from the recovery.

“It’s still hard to believe we did so well.”

“I’m not surprised. You and the girls were amazing. You worked hard, and it showed.”

“You make it sound like a job!” She turned around, crossing one bare foot behind the other as the night breeze passed over the Hudson. The front of her dress, all shadowy lined, danced silently a hint above her knees. One arm dangled lazily over the rim, the other hand holding the champagne flute as the cider fizzed.

“Oh, so you’re not getting paid for it, then?” I took a sip. Hey, if I’m too young to drink in America, then so is she - but I wouldn’t have minded something stronger tonight if I could have gotten any and kept my conscience.

“Well… okay, so it WAS work, and yeah, we did so much for it. But it’s more than just that, y’know.”

“I never really thought about this as much more than work either. At least, well, at the start.”

“Now that we’re at the finish, then, what DO you think?”

“I think I want to know what’s going to happen when we get back to Japan.”

There, I said it. The last three weeks, in a foreign country, with Hibiki hanging around, and I went and mentioned the obvious. “When we get back to Japan.” No more America, no more unspoken atmosphere between us. I had to go ahead and speak it. I had to get a nice solid confirmation. I just had to freakin’ make sure, didn’t I?

She didn’t say anything. Of course she wouldn’t. I didn’t want to read into the accidental touches, the affectionate grabs, the time she’d spend with me rather than with the girls. I didn’t want to think back - not for the first time - about the shudder in my back and the shaking in my stomach when I remember how her stunned breathing felt on my ear, lying inches over her in a dingy San Diego stadium aisle. Her whisper about dancing with me, backstage in Chicago. Laughing and hanging out with her friends in Philly - was that only just two nights ago?

A 16-year old kid wouldn’t hang around with some guy who just got out of tech school, hauling equipment and doing sound work. I’d already had my coming-of-age ceremony. She’s a second-year high school student. I’m a working professional, she’s a pop idol.

“What’s going to happen when we get back, huh…”

Hibiki turned and looked at me, the grin gone from her eyes. Bluer than blue, she almost stared at me with the twinkle still trying to return. Not a few minutes ago she’d mischievously joked that she wanted to have a drink with me on the bow, just us. How she’d meet me. How she wanted just a little time to slip away from the semi-formal reception on the boat that 765 had chartered. She’d made the social rounds, as did the rest of the idols, and the producer, the tech staff leads. I was perfectly content to have a drink and relax. She’d slipped away from me in the main cabin, abuzz with the staff finally enjoying a well-deserved celebration. She’d given me that mischievous grin, and the tingle in my spine yielded to an expansive, almost anti-gravity lift to my stomach. Half of me wondered I was sick, the other half knew that I couldn’t just ignore this chance. But here I was, with her, and some pilfered champagne glasses, an unhappy question in the air, my stomach and spine having yielded to my brain.

She took a drink, looking down for a moment as she did. She finished the glass in one fluid motion - maybe she was thirsty. “Here,” I said, holding up the bottle. Silently, she held her glass up to the bottle. I filled it, the bubbles fizzing as I poured.

“Thanks.” She pulled the champagne flute back, looking back forward down the Hudson. We’d rounded a ferry terminal off to the left, and the Statue of Liberty was clear in view not far away.

It was quiet for a moment, the both of us about an arm’s length apart.

“You know what?” she said after a moment.

“What?”

I wasn’t exactly the playboy type, so I’d never really experienced having a drink literally thrown in my face before. First time for everything.

“When we get _back_?!” she shouted after taking a breath and allowing me a moment to use a tissue to start wiping my face off. One hand was grasping the railing, knuckles white with tension. The other had a now-empty champagne glass, a few residual drips falling to the deck.

“When we get back, I’ll be back in school. I’ll be back at 765, and at lessons, and shows, and handshake sessions. I’ll be taking care of the animals, and I’ll be running and dancing and singing every day.” Her words were speeding up, her accent was twanging more and more towards the Okinawan easygoing lilt that crept in occasionally. “I’ll have been on an American tour and really done a good job at it! I’ll have the chance to go back and give someone a call every now and then! But when we get back, you don’t seem to get that all you sound like you want is to go back to your day job and we’re probably not going to see each other again! If after all this, that’s what you want, then just freaking  _tell_ me already!”

It was rare enough for me to see her angry, but it still hit home pretty hard. For me, the tour was business as usual, but I was with Hibiki. _With_ Hibiki. I had to think for a moment, still wiping sparkling cider off my face as she stared daggers at me. Here I’d been, trying to do my job - but she was there. From when I’d seen her dancing in the dark, and somehow helping her make a swift exit past the fans, she was there. I was there. With Hibiki.

It was probably the darkness that did it. Probably the fact that I knew for sure that nobody else was on the deck. The darkness and the city behind her, the girl who’d been around me on her free time, or even just downtime between rehearsals - shooting the breeze, letting me pick up Hamuzo despite his protests, making sure that she came by with her grapefruit and dried bitter melon if her roommates for the trip were sleeping through breakfast again - the darkness, her silhouette, the wind, the champagne glass I tossed overboard, me stepping forward, the barely-audible shatter of my discarded glass as it hit the Hudson, one arm around the cleft of where her waist met her back, pulling her close, the other across her shoulders, her torso against mine, her hands coming around my back between my shoulder blades, her face buried in my shoulder, the slow rhythm of her torso as she started to breathe a little more deeply, her chest warm against mine, the intoxicating tropical scent of her shampoo, the clamminess of the skin of her back, and the silky, yielding satin of her cocktail dress.

We stayed like that. The swishing, whooshing cast of the chartered party boat’s bow cutting through the Hudson didn’t quite drown out the sounds of the cocktail party back in the cabin, but neither did the party drown out the Hudson. We didn’t move, didn’t do anything else but just stand there hugging each other.

“We should probably go back,” she said, muffled by the summerweight wool of my blazer.

“Probably.”

“And then we’re going back home tomorrow night,” she continued. Looking up at me, having moved a little out of our embrace, her eyes had lost some of their anger. There was still a question in them.

“Yeah.”

“So what about when we get back to Japan?”

“That’s tomorrow night. What time is it now?” I checked my watch. “It’s about 10:30. We’ll be back in dock by a little after 11.”

“Right, then we’re all going back to the hotel, getting packed.”

“They are. We’re not.”

“We’re not?”

“We’re taking the subway downtown,” I started, taking a deep breath and trying desperately to turn the screaming back-and-forth doubt and shout in my head into some kind of plan. If it worked in the movies, it could work for me - hell, I’d read a few of the OK New York! trip guides for Japanese tourists before we left. “I can’t eat on a boat. Too much movement. But I heard that downtown, there’s izakayas and places where bands play underground all night. The subway doesn’t shut down, and I don’t want to either.”

“All night?”

“All night.”

\------  
**DAY 22 - EARLY MORNING**

Hibiki literally had to drag me by the hand up the L train exit, the sun causing both of us to squint half from fatigue and half from taking the subway forever back from Brooklyn, suddenly seeing the sun again. We came from a Russian cabaret, listening to silky-voiced crooners singing Elvis Presley songs in Cyrillic. It had a moment for us to both realize that there was a bottle of vodka on the table at the night club, and the Russian-speaking waitress had said something to us and left two shotglasses in a bucket of ice.

It only took one shot of the vodka to realize it was going to be our last. I don’t know how either of us kept it down, but we were coughing, laughing, falling into the back of the corner booth’s soft backing and shaking our heads. The guy on stage launched into Blue Suede Shoes. I stretched my arms across the seatback, velour and dark. She inched a little into one arm’s swath.

We’d come to the cabaret from Williamsburg, at a place that used to be a knitting factory where a metal band took the stage at 1 AM. Downtown before that, with American college students at an izakaya that looked like it came from back home in Tokyo. Before that, we’d dashed off the party yacht together like something out of a movie, down the gangway onto the dock, the barefoot girl in a little black dress pulling an audio engineer behind her with one hand, high heels still dangling from another.

“Breakfast awaits!”

She grinned, the same grin in a darkened-stagestage dance practice or hauling speakers in California, or doing sound checks in Las Vegas, asking if I’d mind acting like her producer to fend off fans in Denver, helping carry her bags off the bus in Milwaukee, or a long bus ride from Austin to New Orleans. Crawling around for Hamuzou. The show in Chicago when I grabbed her away from bashing her head on my console. Setting up a small stage so she could borrow a guitarist in Pittsburgh so she could sing “Nada Sousou” at a university coffeehouse. Cheesesteak tours with her fellow idols in Philadelphia. Faking sneaking some booze to celebrate on a boat in New York. Succeeding in sneaking booze from a Russian night club. The last doubt in my mind screaming as we decided we’d both take a shot of liquid fire.

The same grin that had only faded earlier as she pulled me down by my necktie as she stood on her tiptoes in the sand on Coney Island, having snuck the vodka for one last try, under the skeleton of the Parachute Jump on the beach. The grin that turned into the lips that kissed my cheek all of a sudden - my heart had stopped until I realized - at the edge of the Atlantic, one hand hanging onto the high heels that she’d kicked off earlier and one hand pulling me down to kiss me.

\-----

We took off from La Guardia. We’d crossed the Canadian border and started towards a course over the North Pole, twelve hours until Narita, when I’d turned to find her asleep on my shoulder.


End file.
